PALO ALTO, CA - SEPTEMBER 19: Toby Gerhart #7 of the Stanford Cardinal runs with the ball during their game against the San Jose State Spartans at Stanford Stadium on September 19, 2009 in Palo Alto, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

The Bill Walsh Legacy Game, the last to be played for the foreseeable future, deserved a better send-off, but it wasn't like the result was a surprise.

Stanford's 42-17 victory over San Jose State had all the elements of great entertainment - save drama, thrills, electricity or good word of mouth. The better team wasted little time establishing command and control, and the final score was in every single way indicative of the relative strengths of the two teams.

"It was a good win, and we needed it," head coach Jim Harbaugh said, going generic so as not to have to try to fit this game into the more strident framework of the upcoming schedule. "Chris Owusu especially ... I told him before the game, 'We need three explosive plays from you,' and we got three."

Harbaugh should have asked for six, then. Against a San Jose State team in full vapor lock, he could have gotten them. In fact, after his first explosive play, he had 59:50 to fit in the other two, so his bar actually was fairly low.

Stanford won the coin toss, and elected to let Owusu crush San Jose State's spirits in 10 seconds. Which, when you think about it a moment, sure beats deferring until the second half.

Owusu, Stanford's best return man in years (and yes, that includes T.J. Rushing and Mike Mitchell, just to name two recent bolts), collected the opening kickoff from Philip Zavala, broke left and maintained a 3-yard force field between himself and the Spartans' kick-coverage team for all 94 yards of his touchdown.

"I just caught the ball, and I looked up, and there was a huge seam and I made sure I hit it," the sophomore from Westlake Village (Los Angeles County) said. "I got a great lead block from (Jeremy) Stewart, and I just hit the hole as quickly as I could."

It was a message that everyone in the building received and understood - this was going to be an insufficiently challenging victory for Stanford and an insufficiently lucrative beating for San Jose State.

The Spartans, who, in the current economic crunch, have realized that they can make a lot more money traveling a lot farther for a beat-down, opted out of the 2010 game and replaced it with a trip to Tuscaloosa to play Alabama for $1.1 million, and the games scheduled for 2011, '12 and '13 are in question. They would have realized this under any economic condition, given that Stanford draws about 30,000 for most games, and Alabama draws 92,000 for spring practice, but the greater point remains the same, to wit: Bill Walsh's legacy might have psychic value, but psychic value doesn't pay the electric bill.

And Stanford takes on Sacramento State next year to collect a freebie a little lower down the football food chain. They all get what they want, more or less.

That is, if you're not particular about results.

Mostly, the game was a dry recitation of facts we already knew, between Gerhart's dominance between the tackles, San Jose State's struggles on offense and defense, Owusu's effervescence and Stanford's place in a confusing Pac-10 Conference.

That last part is the most fun to contemplate, as Cal is now the big dog until further notice (in two weeks, when USC comes to town), and Stanford is part of an amorphous blob in the middle that includes both Oregons, Arizona State, UCLA and, most remarkably, Washington. This might not be a great season for Pac-10 resume building, but it surely will be less predictable than most, and if you can't be the Southeastern Conference, you might as well be wacky.

In sum, this wasn't exactly the energizing test the Cardinal might have wanted before the toothy part of the schedule begins - home against the newly intriguing Huskies and Bruins, then at Oregon State and at Arizona.

In fairness, though, the Cardinal get full marks for not letting the game ever become interesting, despite their four turnovers, and for logging a victory that will become more and more important as Stanford fights to get to six - and the bowl game that would provide the platform for its future.

And at some point, maybe in two or three or nine years, we'll start missing this series again and crying out for its resumption. For the moment, though, it is a game that seems to have no constituents, and that's not enough of a legacy to attach Walsh's name.

Unless he drove through Sacramento State's campus once looking for a special-teams player.